Men Offer to Marry Rape Victims Rather Than Kill Them

Four sisterswere recently raped by alleged pro-government troops in Syria. Normally these women would be senselessly killed by their OWN families in a twisted sense of honor. But for once, something is changing. REAL men are stepping forward.

A group of 15 Syrian men in Khirbet al-Jous -- recognizing that these women are "victims of the revolution" -- have vowed to protect them by offering to marry these women, who would otherwise be seen as unsuitable for marriage and killed.The field of suitors has been whittled to four.

While I am not sure marrying men they've never met is the right answer for these women, it's certainly a massive step in the right direction.

This is what just utterly flabbergasts me as a woman. How can cultures and governments see their wives, daughters, and their mothers as such pawns and collateral damage? It has frustrated me for years, from reports of "honor" acid attacks, women stoned, and women beaten without protection.

So it is a bizarre sense of relief I feel that these women will marry men they have never met, after having been raped by other men, rather than being buried up to their neck and stoned by their own families. It is at least one baby step in the right direction, is it not?